O2 – Gigaomhttp://gigaom.com
The industry leader in emerging technology researchMon, 19 Mar 2018 22:01:45 +0000en-UShourly1Telefónica to phase out 1,600 German jobs in wake of E-Plus takeoverhttp://gigaom.com/2014/10/17/telefonica-to-phase-out-1600-german-jobs-in-wake-of-e-plus-takeover/
Fri, 17 Oct 2014 13:45:51 +0000http://gigaom.com/?p=881712Telefónica will cut 1,600 jobs in Germany following the merger of O2 Deutschland with E-Plus, to get rid of duplicate roles. The jobs will be phased out by 2018, the firm said Friday, noting that positions would go from both O2 and E-Plus. It also stressed that E-Plus’s Düsseldorf office would retain an important role in the combined operation, alongside Telefónica Deutschland’s Munich headquarters and Hamburg office. Telefónica completed its purchase of E-Plus from Dutch telecoms group KPN at the beginning of October following European Commission approval in late August, in the process becoming Germany’s biggest mobile operator.
]]>Developers use Android Wear to build a Chromecast smart watch remotehttp://gigaom.com/2014/04/09/developers-use-android-wear-to-build-a-chromecast-smart-watch-remote/
Wed, 09 Apr 2014 17:00:48 +0000http://gigaom.com/?p=833151This is pretty cool: Some developers from the Telefonica-owned European mobile carrier O2 have been toying with the idea to use an Android smart watches as a Chromecast remote. The O2 Lab team first used Google’s newly-released Android Wear SDK to build a basic remote control app, and then ported the same app to Sony’s Android-powered smart watch – presumably because they wanted to run it on an actual device as well. Check out the video below:

]]>UK gets 4G competition as Vodafone and O2’s networks go livehttp://gigaom.com/2013/08/29/uk-gets-4g-competition-as-vodafone-and-o2s-networks-go-live/
http://gigaom.com/2013/08/29/uk-gets-4g-competition-as-vodafone-and-o2s-networks-go-live/#commentsThu, 29 Aug 2013 07:48:39 +0000http://gigaom.com/?p=684880The UK finally has real 4G competition, after Vodafone(s vod) and O2(s tef) set their — initially rather limited — LTE networks live. They join EE, which has had almost a year’s headstart and therefore has a more extensive 4G network already in place.

All the UK’s mobile operators bought spectrum at a much-delayed auction at the start of this year, allowing them to start offering super-fast mobile broadband services. However, due to the result of a merger between T-Mobile UK and Orange UK, EE already had an unusually large pile of 1800MHz 2G spectrum, which it was allowed to reuse for 4G as of October last year. Hence the headstart, which has allowed it to roll out 4G in 105 towns and cities so far.

Vodafone said on Thursday that it has already had 20,000 signups for its 4G service, which is initially available in London – the carrier says it will over the next two months turn on a new cell site there every 30 minutes.

O2, meanwhile, used the occasion of its 4G network’s birth to open pre-orders for the 4G variant of Google(s goog)’s new Nexus 7 tablet — the LTE-equipped device will hit O2’s stores on 13 September, while the Wi-Fi-only variant went on sale in the UK on Wednesday. O2’s 4G network is initially available in London and the northern cities of Leeds and Bradford.

Price-wise, the three big networks are all in a similar range but Vodafone offers the best deal, setting a 2GB cap on its low-end £26-per-month tariff, whereas the other two set a 1GB limit on their identically-priced tariffs. All the carriers are offering premium music and video content as part of the package.

However, Vodafone, O2 and EE all charge a premium over their normal 3G pricing for the pleasure of using 4G. The scrappy fourth player, Three, said back in February that it would not charge a premium when it introduces LTE – and what’s more, it won’t cap usage. Three’s rollout will begin in December in the three largest British cities, namely London, Birmingham and Manchester.

]]>http://gigaom.com/2013/08/29/uk-gets-4g-competition-as-vodafone-and-o2s-networks-go-live/feed/1O2 UK lays its 4G cards on the table, but Vodafone’s offering still looks like the best dealhttp://gigaom.com/2013/08/14/o2-uk-lays-its-4g-cards-on-the-table-but-vodafones-offering-still-looks-like-the-best-deal/
http://gigaom.com/2013/08/14/o2-uk-lays-its-4g-cards-on-the-table-but-vodafones-offering-still-looks-like-the-best-deal/#commentsWed, 14 Aug 2013 11:38:14 +0000http://gigaom.com/?p=679568O2, Telefonica(s tef)’s UK mobile operator, has revealed more details of its upcoming 4G packages – and, like competitors EE and Vodafone(s vod), it’s going to be bundling sports and entertainment content in an effort to woo LTE first-timers.

O2 had previously said its 4G plans would start at £26 ($40) a month when they launch on 29 August, but they hadn’t said what users would get for that cash. Now we know: that £26 starter tariff will get you 1GB of data a month, and the tariffs go up to £36 a month for 5GB.

That actually puts O2 on a par with EE (the only carrier offering 4G at the moment), which also provides 1GB for £26, though its cheaper £21-per-month deal maxes out at a measly 500MB. Vodafone offers a better deal than either EE or O2 — £26 a month for 2GB.

O2 does also offer a reasonably extensive network of 9,000 Wi-Fi hotspots around the UK, but those aren’t actually limited to O2 customers, so that’s not much of a deciding factor for UK consumers.

All the carriers that have thus far announced their 4G deals (only Three remains) are bundling free streaming music. EE has Deezer, Vodafone has Spotify Premium and O2 has “O2 Tracks”, which looks to be more limited than Deezer and Spotify Premium – it includes the top 40 hits and “a unique collection of playlists and videos, handpicked by artists.” That said, O2 Tracks also comes with music videos, which is a good way to show off 4G’s capabilities.

Vodafone is offering free Sky Sports TV, but again O2 seems to be rivalling this with a more curated experience, namely sports videos including “weekly content from sporting heroes offering training advice, fitness and nutrition tips, interviews and top music playlists to work out to.”

I’m with uSwitch.com mobile expert Ernest Doku on this one. In a statement on Wednesday, he opined that:

“While Vodafone has bought big names like Sky Sports and Spotify to the 4G table, O2’s own-brand online offerings run the risk of seeming like a budget alternative to consumers. Without price tags for these services to easily justify the premium, O2 will need to prove that its own offerings are just as valuable as Vodafone’s tie-ins.”

So, in short, the major UK carriers have all settled around more-or-less the same price point, with Vodafone edging past its rivals in the good-deal stakes. However, Three still hasn’t put its cards on the table – and Three exists to be a disruptor-slash-gadfly, so perhaps we can expect a shake-up from that direction.

]]>http://gigaom.com/2013/08/14/o2-uk-lays-its-4g-cards-on-the-table-but-vodafones-offering-still-looks-like-the-best-deal/feed/1Telefónica scraps its free messaging app Tu Me to focus on more valuable Tu Gohttp://gigaom.com/2013/08/07/telefonica-scraps-its-free-messaging-app-tu-me-to-focus-on-more-valuable-tu-go/
http://gigaom.com/2013/08/07/telefonica-scraps-its-free-messaging-app-tu-me-to-focus-on-more-valuable-tu-go/#commentsWed, 07 Aug 2013 15:23:21 +0000http://gigaom.com/?p=677020The mobile carrier group Telefónica (s tef) is to shut down Tu Me, a service that lets users call and message each other for free from their smartphones. Some users have received notifications that Tu Me will be no more as of Sept. 8, and the company confirmed the closure to me (pardon the pun) on Wednesday.

The shutdown comes as no surprise – not because carriers such as Telefónica risk losing voice and SMS revenue by putting out such all-IP “over the top” (OTT) platforms, but because users are already all on third-party OTT platforms such as WhatsApp and Skype.(s MSFT) Rivals such as T-Mobile USA(s TMUS) (the Bobsled platform) and Orange (Libon) should take note.

Focusing efforts

As far as Telefónica is concerned, though, there’s more to it than that. Earlier this year the Telefónica Digital team did something rather smart by launching a separate app called Tu Go on the O2 UK network. Tu Go doesn’t act as a rival to O2’s core services; rather, it extends those services to other platforms, so you can for example make a voice call from your desktop with the call coming out of your monthly mobile call allowance, or receive a call – made to your standard mobile number – on your iPad(s aapl).

This is clever because it squeezes more value out of the elements that Telefónica controls, namely the phone number and billing arrangement, rather than trying to create a whole new platform. Hence this, from a company spokesman today:

“Tu Me will be discontinued in September. We’ve taken the decision to focus our resources in this area on Tu Go where we believe we have the greater commercial opportunity. Tu Go launched in the UK in February and the concept of ‘freeing your number from the mobile’ has received very strong customer feedback, addressing needs around coverage, roaming and multi-device use.

“The fact that we’ve put the service in our UK TV advertising (starting last Friday) is a strong endorsement of the importance of Tu Go for the business. We’ll be re-directing resources from Tu Me to expand the roll out of Tu Go into more Telefónica markets… All active users of the service will be contacted 30 days ahead of the closure to notify them.”

The spokesman also argued that the closure reflects Telefónica Digital’s “agile” approach to product development. “We certainly couldn’t have launched Tu Go without the experience of Tu Me and the lessons we learnt through developing and launching that product,” he said.

What the spokesman wouldn’t reveal, however, is how much of a failure Tu Me actually was – he wouldn’t disclose its user figures, nor those for Tu Go.

And Joyn?

There’s also another gaping hole in this picture: Joyn, the cross-carrier “rich communications service” platform that the carriers all hope can fend off WhatsApp, Skype and their ilk. It was always a bit weird that Telefónica was backing both Joyn and its own very similar rival, and it’s equally weird that the operator has not mentioned Joyn as a reason for ditching Tu Me.

According to Telefónica’s spokesman, this was because Joyn and Tu Me are “quite different,” despite the fact that they offer much the same functionality. “Joyn needs deep integration, and something like WhatsApp is moving very quickly,” he said. “We support Joyn but we can see how fast the market is moving.”

To be honest, I remain skeptical about Joyn (as with any cross-carrier initiative) and Telefónica’s silence on the matter doesn’t help – nor does the fact that Telefónica, which launched Joyn in Spain last November, is yet to launch it anywhere else.

But either way, it’s nice to see the carrier group realize that its efforts are best spent on making what it already offers more valuable.

EE has until now been the only major UK operator to launch 4G, due to its ability to reuse some of its old 2G voice-and-text spectrum. Its plans start at £21 ($32.50) per month, but that SIM-only comes with a measly 500MB — not much when high connection speeds encourage more data use. Vodafone’s starter tariff is priced at £26, but it comes with a 2GB cap while EE’s £26-a-month tariff tops out at just 1GB.

We still don’t know what cap O2(s tef) will apply to its starter tariff (also £26 a month), but even if it decides to match Vodafone’s offer, Vodafone is also offering its 4G customers a choice of free Spotify Premium or free Sky Sports Mobile TV. (In fairness, EE does offer the music streaming service Deezer as part of its package, although Deezer arguably doesn’t have the brand recognition in the UK that Spotify does.)

Voda’s 4G services will go live on 29 August, the same day as O2 turns its LTE network on, in London. By the end of the year Birmingham, Bradford, Coventry, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham and Sheffield will all be live too, and Vodafone says it will achieve 98 percent indoor coverage across the UK by the end of 2015.

Finally, the UK 4G market is about to become properly competitive. All that's left is for O2 to detail its terms a bit more fully, and for fourth player Three to lay its cards on the table.

CORRECTION: This article originally stated that EE’s starter package was priced at £26, when it is in fact £21 a month.

]]>http://gigaom.com/2013/08/07/watch-out-ee-vodafones-uk-4g-deal-looks-mighty-tempting/feed/3UK 4G market opens up as O2 sets launch date for end of Augusthttp://gigaom.com/2013/08/01/uk-4g-market-opens-up-as-o2-sets-launch-date-for-end-of-august/
http://gigaom.com/2013/08/01/uk-4g-market-opens-up-as-o2-sets-launch-date-for-end-of-august/#commentsThu, 01 Aug 2013 07:33:23 +0000http://gigaom.com/?p=674441Telefonica’s(s tef) O2 UK has finally given details, including the launch date, for its 4G services. This means we now have our first real idea of the competition that EE – until now the only mainstream 4G provider in the UK – will face.

EE’s monopoly since October 2012 was based on the fact that regulators let it reuse or “refarm” some of its existing 2G spectrum, specifically spectrum in the 1800MHz band, for 4G purposes. O2, on the other hand, had to wait for January’s spectrum auction to pick up airwaves in the 800MHz band that it could use for LTE services. The 800MHz band, which was previously used for digital TV and wireless microphones, was declared cleared this week, and on Thursday O2 said it would launch its 4G offering on 29 August.

O2’s rollout will begin in the three cities of London, Leeds and Bradford, before spreading to 10 more cities by the end of this year. By contrast, EE’s 4G is already active at “double speed” (around 30Mbps in practice) in 15 cities, and at normal speed in 95 towns and cities. That said, 800MHz spectrum (of which EE has also bought a chunk) is better than 1800MHz spectrum at supporting services that penetrate into buildings and over long distances.

Ultimately, both carriers aim to provide LTE coverage to 98 percent of the UK population.

According to O2 chief Ronan Dunne:

“It’s great that I am able to announce O2 4G the day after the spectrum has been cleared for use. Digital connectivity will be made ubiquitous by 4G and become the oxygen of modern life.”

O2 could certainly use the extra capacity that it’s about to turn on, as the carrier said data usage on its network has doubled in the last year.

As for price, O2 said its plans would start at £26 ($39) per month. The cheapest non-4G tariff on O2 is £11 per month. EE’s cheapest 4G tariff costs £21 per month, but that’s a SIM-only affair and we still don’t know the details of O2’s cheapest offering in order to compare the two. EE’s £21 deal, it should be noted, only comes with 500MB of monthly data – a bit of a joke when your connection is that zippy.

We’re still waiting to hear about Vodafone(s vod)’s pricing, but Three – the upstart fourth player – has already suggested that it won’t charge a premium for 4G speeds, theoretically meaning LTE prices starting at £15 per month. Both of these carriers will also launch their LTE services by year’s end and, seeing as Vodafone has a network-sharing deal with O2 to cut down on infrastructure costs, it’s a fair guess that its announcement won’t be far off.

]]>http://gigaom.com/2013/08/01/uk-4g-market-opens-up-as-o2-sets-launch-date-for-end-of-august/feed/2Touting fastest 4G takeup in Europe so far, EE adds sharing and pre-pay optionshttp://gigaom.com/2013/06/06/touting-fastest-4g-takeup-in-europe-so-far-ee-adds-sharing-and-pre-pay-options/
Thu, 06 Jun 2013 11:10:08 +0000http://gigaom.com/?p=654961Half a million people have signed up for EE’s 4G services in the 7 months they’ve been up and running, the British carrier announced on Thursday. That’s the fastest LTE take-up in Europe thus far, the operator claims.

That’s kind of unsurprising, as EE currently has a monopoly on 4G in the UK — the carrier has been “refarming” all the lovely 2G 1800MHz spectrum it already holds for 4G services, and rivals will only enter the LTE game later this summer using other spectrum they bought at auction earlier this year. Still, EE’s numbers seem to show an acceleration in takeup, as less than 2 months ago it reported a total of 318,000 LTE subscribers.

That said, with those rivals (Vodafone(s vod), O2(s tef) and Three) about to launch their own 4G services, EE seems aware that it needs to evolve its own offering. So it’s about to start providing two new twists, namely shared 4G plans – for multi-device or multi-person use – and its first pay-as-you-go 4G plans, for tablets and laptops only.

Pricing and availability are yet to be announced, but EE is coming to the end of its 4G-exclusivity honeymoon phase and it would be foolish to make these offerings too pricey. Of course, it would be pretty dumb to make them too cheap either – no-one in the uber-competitive British mobile market wants a race to the bottom just as they spend billions upgrading their networks.

“By the end of June, we will have rolled out 4G across 55 percent of the population, and will continue to switch on new towns and cities,” EE CEO Olaf Swantee said in a statement. ” And with commuters spending an average of 75 minutes travelling every day, EE will also roll out 4G across the busiest airports, commuter routes and shopping centres across the UK.”

EE aims to have 98 percent population coverage by the end of 2014. The next towns and cities on its rollout list are Aberdeen, Bath, Bournemouth, Brighton, Cambridge, Ipswich, Middlesbrough, Northampton, Norwich, Poole, Plymouth, Portsmouth, Swansea and York.

Incidentally, EE says its average 4G download speed is 19.4 Mbps at the moment. That’s decent, but it’s worth noting that its average download speed across both 3G and 4G is a still-respectable 13.6 Mbps — bearing in mind that EE has around 26 million customers, 98 percent of whom will still be on 3G technology, that’s a handy reminder that modern HSPA networks can do a pretty good job too.

]]>Google to use wind power from Sweden to run its Finnish data centerhttp://gigaom.com/2013/06/04/google-to-use-wind-power-from-sweden-to-run-its-finnish-data-center/
http://gigaom.com/2013/06/04/google-to-use-wind-power-from-sweden-to-run-its-finnish-data-center/#commentsTue, 04 Jun 2013 10:00:10 +0000http://gigaom.com/?p=653949Google continues to invest in clean power internationally, and on Tuesday announced its first contract to buy wind power to provide energy for a data center in Europe. Google says it plans to buy all of the wind power from a large wind farm that will be built in Northern Sweden, which will be built and operated by Swedish wind farm developer O2.

The wind farm, called Maevaara, will be 72 MW when fully built and is supposed to be fully operational in 2015. Google’s contract is to buy 100 percent of the power for 10 years. The investment arm of German insurance company Allianz is putting up the funds for the project and will own it when it turns on in 2015.

Google is operating as the power customer, and buy contracting to buy the power, made the permitting and financing a lot easier for the investor developer. These contracts are called power purchase agreements, or PPAs, and are common in utility world. This is Google’s fourth PPA, and first in Europe.

The interconnection between the wind farm in Sweden and the data center in Finland is possible because of the transmission lines connecting the two locations. This type of infrastructure can be hard to get built in the U.S.

Google is interested in clean power because the company consumes a ton of energy for its data centers every year. Google wants to move more and more of that energy onto clean power in order to reduce its carbon footprint, and also to better manage the source of its energy generation. However, Google also invests in clean power projects as a way to make money, like the solar project in South Africa that it announced last week. For these types of projects Google can make a return on the capital that it invests over the life of the clean power system.

Google has invested over a billion dollars into a Hoover’s Dam worth (2 GW) of clean power projects, from wind farms, to solar thermal and solar panel installations. It’s also doing more experimental things — for example, its lab Google X recently bought up the high altitude wind startup Makani Power.

Here’s our world map with Google’s clean power investments:

[googlemaps https://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msa=0&msid=200759420483990458155.0004ddf123f434da8794b&ie=UTF8&t=m&source=embed&ll=38.959409,-97.558594&spn=27.242942,62.138672&output=embed&w=425&h=350]
]]>http://gigaom.com/2013/06/04/google-to-use-wind-power-from-sweden-to-run-its-finnish-data-center/feed/1O2 UK moves away from handset subsidies with decoupled Refresh tariffshttp://gigaom.com/2013/04/12/o2-uk-moves-away-from-handset-subsidies-with-decoupled-refresh-tariffs/
Fri, 12 Apr 2013 12:26:54 +0000http://gigaom.com/?p=630477Much as various carriers have done in other European countries, and as T-Mobile has done in the U.S., O2 has become the first in the UK to decouple the cost of the handset from its service contracts. The operator has done so through a new option called O2 Refresh, which will launch this coming Tuesday.

It works like this: customers sign up for separate phone and airtime plans at the same time, with the duration of the plans being 24 months. If the customer wants to upgrade their phone within that period, they can simply pay off the remainder of the phone plan, with no further penalty. O2 will then unlock their phone, unless the device is exclusive to O2’s network.

Similarly, if customers hit the end of the two years and don’t want a new handset, they only have to pay the monthly airtime fee from that point on. This is a lot fairer to the user than the traditional system, where the benefit to the operator of not having to provide an expensive new device after two years isn’t necessarily passed on to the customer in full.

Bye-bye “free”

By adopting this sort of interest-free financing scheme, O2 is effectively moving away from the traditional, opaque model of subsidising the handset up-front, then burying the true cost of the device in monthly contract payments. That’s not to say customers will pay more under the Refresh scheme — it just means they will more accurately see what they’re paying for, and will no longer be under the illusion that the handset they’re buying is “free”.

In the words of an O2 spokesman today:

“This isn’t about subsidies. Our main reason for doing this is to give people more freedom to get the latest phone whenever they want without paying any extra charges — our customers are telling us they don’t want to be tied to their current phone for up to two years.

“By allowing customers to pay for their phone and tariff in this way, we are also able to more responsibly manage our costs, which will mean a better service for our customers and greater investment in future products and services.”

That is indeed a problem carriers have these days with the subsidized model: people are increasingly adopting smartphones, which are complex and therefore quite expensive. By encouraging people to upgrade more often, O2 is making it likely that customers will pay it back for their phones more quickly than previously. It is surely no coincidence that the Refresh focus is on high-end devices such as the iPhone(s aapl) 5 and Samsung Galaxy S4.

The move also handily pre-empts Ofcom’s probable introduction of new rules for carriers around price hikes and letting customers leave early. The telecoms regulator is annoyed with the operators for raising their prices, then penalizing people who subsequently want to end their contracts before the term is up.

The Refresh airtime plans start at £12 ($18.43) a month, which will get you 600 minutes of call time, unlimited texts and 750MB of data. The phone plan pricing depends on the phone, obviously, but O2 said by way of example that the HTC One would cost £49.99 up-front, then £20 a month. The carrier said customers would end up paying the same amount as they would on a combined tariff.

So how will this pan out for O2 and its customers? For that, we can turn to an admirably frank post on O2’s The Lab blog from last month, written in response to T-Mobile USA’s similar move, and bearing in mind the experience of O2 parent Telefonica in Spain, where subscriber numbers subsequently increased:

“Could it work in the UK? Would customers be willing to pay up-front for their handsets? Would customers rather take out a loan from their mobile network and pay for the handset separately? Would customers compare prices across networks and simply choose the one which is cheapest today rather than looking at the [total cost of ownership]?

“I think moving to removing subsidies is great for consumers. It lowers the price they pay and means that they’re not beholden to an evil operator gouging them for two years. And, if at any point the customer wants the latest phone – they don’t have to go through a complicated upgrade procedure – just slap down the cash.

“For the operator, I think it’s also good news. It forces them to concentrate on customer service. They don’t need to extend large loans to the customer, nor do they need to compete on up-front cost. The downside, of course, is that the monthly revenue generated by the customer could be lower.”